“I could jam out with Ozzy Osbourne one day and do a Britney Spears show the next,” says versatile video jockey Vello Virkhaus. Known as VJ V2, he draws on a library of more than 8,000 digital video loops to craft dazzling displays for live performances by musicians like Korn, Beyoncé and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Virkhaus ticks off the arsenal of images crammed on his PowerBook and 500 GB external drive: “I have textures, abstract graphics, spline wire characters, blips, vignettes, explosions, splatter, grunge, gore, grit and decay — everything from rock-and-roll and heavy metal to designy pop stuff.”

“When you’re in front of 50,000 people and you’re about to push this one button, there’s that initial rush in case it doesn’t work. But it works. And after that, it’s the most fun you could have.”

The Rush

A pioneer in the emerging art of manipulating visuals the way disc jockeys shape sound, Virkhaus performs on club and concert stages worldwide. “Sometimes it’s really nerve-racking,” admits Virkhaus. “When you’re in front of 50,000 people and you’re about to push this one button, there’s that initial rush in case it doesn’t work. But it works. And after that, it’s the most fun you could have.”

Video scratching, says Virkhaus, is “a really cool performance tool that’s all about motion. Your clips mostly have either very pronounced character actions or horizontal, action-based motion. Then you manipulate and cut just like you’d do with a record, pitching them to line up with the music.”

An Emerging, Fluid Art

“There’s a whole new base of young artists who are interested in doing live visuals,” notes Virkhaus. “It’s all a direct offshoot of the DJ culture, coming down from hip-hop musicians like Grandmaster Flash. That culture just blew up, and now the VJ’s are emerging from it.”

For VJ V2, his artistry comes from a collage of talents. “I wear several hats,” he says. “I write treatments, create and direct 3D animation and visual effects, shoot and edit video, do remixes, direct shows and perform live on concert tours.”

Even after it’s crafted, however, a Virkhaus show is a fluid thing. “A VJ has to deal with issues of timing and spontaneity that directors of music videos don’t have to consider because recorded music and video don’t change,” he explains. “But a band on stage could do anything. So you can’t just create visual wallpaper. You have to layer the images and reserve complementary footage for moments that may or may not happen.”

Red Hot Artistic Freedom

Virkhaus, proud of his work for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ recent tour of Europe and Japan, explains how he turned 11 of the band's songs into video art: “We broke out each song structure into chorus, verse and what I call ‘hero loops’ — the bits that represent the main character or most exciting moment. Then we mixed these loops over a bed of video images that are like a textural background, and we layered other images on top. We designed the material to be performed on the fly, so the VJ or production manager can respond to what’s happening on stage.”

Virkhaus teamed with six animators, his assistant producer and business manager Yanira Franco and Red Hot Chili Peppers production designer Grier Govorko to create the visuals. “[Chili Peppers' bandleader] Anthony Ketis says, ‘Whatever Grier wants to do is gonna be totally cool with us,’” relates Virkhaus happily. “Grier has worked with the band for eight years designing lighting and stages, and he’s their most trusted confidant. So after we agreed on basic concepts, there was no approval process we had to go through.”

Govorko was already a VJ V2 fan. “He had seen our work for Sting, Beyonce, Blink-182, Korn and other bands,” says Virkhaus. “Based on that, he let us design what we thought would be most appropriate for the Red Hot Chili Peppers tour.” Virkhaus notes that not every client allows so much leeway. “Some bands want to be way more involved,” he says. “But the Chili Peppers believe in us as artists, so they gave us free rein.”

Next page: Spreadsheets and Storyboards